Barapa Barapa

The Barapa Barapa people (also known as Baraparapa) are an indigenous Australian people whose territory covered parts of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria. They had close connections with the Wemba-Wemba.

Barapa Barapa have extensive shared country with their traditional neighbours, the Wemba-Wemba and Yorta Yorta, covering Deniliquin, the Kow Swamp and Perrricoota/Koondrook. The Barapa Barapa form part of the North-West Nations Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Group, and undertake significant cultural heritage and Natural Resource Management work in the area.

Baraparapa territory which covered areas in what are now the states of New South Wales and Victoria, is estimated to have taken in some 3,600 square miles (9,300 km2) of land, southern tributaries of the Murrumbidgee River from above Hay down to Kerang. One early source also has them, perhaps a distinct horde, present in Moulamein[a] It included Cohuna, Gunbower, Brassi, Conargo, and the land south of Carrathool.[3]Deniliquin
Their neighbours to the north west were the Wemba-Wemba, the Wergaia frontier was directly to the west, the Yorta Yorta boundaries ran north and south to their east. The Djadjawurrung lay to the south.

A mortar in Barapa barapa territory, at Koondrook Perricoota Forest near Barbers Creek, was recovered in 2012 and an analysis led to the suggestion that it might have been employed to grind gypsum, used by more northerly tribes in funerals, but here perhaps for obtaining a corroborree body paint.[6]

^ R. H. Mathews recorded some of their language from Informants in Moulamein.[2]

^The terms, save for one and consonantal doubling are almost identical to those given for the Gamilaraay system by A. W. Howitt in 1884[4]

^Exceptions exist, with a Murri marrying a Butha, or Kubbi an Ippatha. Strictly speaking, this diagram would imply a brother's child can marry his sister's child, but this is rigorously forbidden. A brother's child's offspring may marry a sister's child's offspring.[5]